Regulating Television

Michael O'Malley, Associate Professor of History and Art History, George
Mason University

Introduction

Television was invented in the late 1920s, but didn't become popular
until the 1950s. In 1949, about one million sets were in use: by the end
of the 1950s, Americans owned more than 50 million TVs. As television
began reaching into nearly very living room in America, it brought questions
about its content -- should it be regulated, and how?

Who Regulates Television Content?

There wereand still are many similarities between television and
radio. Both are (or were, before cable) "broadcast" over the
airwaves, and both are regulated by the federal government. Legal scholar
Marc Sophos describes the argument for regulation:

Broadcast channels are "scarce" (that is, there are not enough
available channels for all of those who wish to broadcast), and the electromagnetic
spectrum has been deemed, since the beginning of broadcast regulation,
to be a publicly owned natural resource. This "scarce public resource"
rationale formed the foundation on which broadcast regulation was based.

Like radio broadcasters, television broadcasters operated under the authority
of the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC was established
by Franklin Roosevelt with the assumption that the airwaves, the broadcast
"bandwidth," belonged to the people, much in the same way as,
for example, federal forest land belongs to the people. Broadcasters applied
for a license to use a section of that public property, a specific frequency.
In return, broadcasters had:

an obligation to serve the interest of the community. This obligation
requires the licensee to 'ascertain the needs of the community' and then
provide program service to foster public understanding of those issues.
How the licensee provides programming to serve the needs [was] left to
the licensee's discretion. (source)

The FCC had the right to restrict content -- to censor obscene material,
to require balanceand "fairness" in political programming, and
to insist that a certain percentage of each broadcast week be devoted
to what it termed "public use." The preceding link gives more
information on the FCC and its political requirements. The fairness doctrine
was eventually dropped in the 1980s.

In the 1950s, as today, the FCC also prohibited "obscene and indecent"
material. Programming is considered obscene if "the average person,
applying contemporary community standards, would find that the material
appeals to the prurient interest; that the material describes or depicts
sexual conduct in a patently offensive manner; or taken as whole, the
material lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value."
Indecent programming was defined as "patently offensive as measured
by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium and describes
sexual or excretory activities and organs." Obscene programming was
prohibited at all times in the 1950s, but "indecent" programming
was allowed at certain times, typically after hours when children went
to bed. The meaning of "indecent" has tended to change over
time. In the 1950s, for example, TV programmers would not show a married
couple sharing a bed. Married couples, in 1950s TV-land, slept in separate
beds. The subject of indecent programming is still unsettled, as any listener
of drive-time commercial radio knows.

In the 1950s the FCC, whose board is appointed by the President,
also considered setting aside certain parts of the broadcast spectrum
for children's non-profit, educational programming. FCC board members
were increasingly concerned about the violence on television, and the
lack of educational children's programming. When the FCC in 1952 added
UHF (ultra high frequency) channels to the existing channels then in operation,
they reserved 10 percent for use by nonprofit educational organizations.

In testimony to a 1955 Congressional subcommittee, Freida
B. Hennock, the first female FCC commissioner, advocated oversight of
commercial television by governmental and civic bodiesincluding
womens organizationsand championed educational television.

William Wood, general manager of a new Pittsburgh educational
station, strengthened her point when he emphasized the lack of violence
in his stations programming and included excerpts from fan mail
praising an acclaimed childrens show.

Can TV Regulate Itself?

FCC regulations addressed questions of obscenity
and to some extent, political balance, but they paid little attention
to other aspects of television content. How should the FCC approach depictions
of violence, criminality, drug and alcohol use, and other forms of immorality?
Congress held its first hearing on the subject in 1952, they chose not
to take any action to interfere with the industry, in part because that
year the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters adopted
their own code to regulate broadcast content. The NARTB followed the model
of Hollywood, which had always, when presented with calls for censorship,
acted to censor itself with production codes and decency standards. No
specific law said that married couples could not share a bed on TV: rather,
the television industry voluntarily imposed that limit on itself.

Still the Senate, led by Estes Kefauver of
Tennessee, held hearings in 1954 and 1955 on the possible influence of
television on juvenile delinquency. The resulting report demonstrated
how the industry's Television Code regarded the portrayal of crime, horror,
sex, and law enforcement, and to the industrys responsibility to
provide wholesome entertainment for children. The report also
presented testimony from a television executive who cited the motion picture
industrys history of successful self-regulation to ward off government
censorship. The Senate reportexcerpts of which are included belowalso
presented the preamble to the Code and detailed the Codes review
mechanism.

You can now see some of the range of concerns
television raised. Should it be entirely for profit, or should it serve
"the public good?" How would "public good" be defined?
Should the government act to restrict content, and is so, how? Consider
these questions as you move on to the next part of the assignment.